Netkipedia is your free internet portal that walks you through everything you need to know about the internet. Go international with your personal ideas, organization or business today by following our free tutorials. Connect with the right people, right resources and more, all in one place.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg has been named Time’s “Person of the Year” for 2010. Time said
Zuckerberg was chosen “for connecting more than half a billion people and
mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of
exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives” (Time
2010).

The
Opportunity

Facebook (facebook.com), the world’s most popular social networking
site, opened in February 2004. Originally called “thefacebook,” the site was
conceived by Mark Zuckerberg as an online directory where Harvard students
could connect with each other. It became an instant hit within a month,
subsequently expanding to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. Zuckerberg was soon
joined by fellow Harvard students Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes for site
development. The site was renamed “Facebook” in August 2005, and the domain facebook.com
was purchased for $200,000.

Soon after, Facebook opened
an office in Palo Alto, California. By the end of the year, the site had 1
million users. Facebook’s second investment, $12.7 million for 13 percent
corporate ownership, came in April 2005 from Accel Partners, a leading Silicon
Valley venture capital firm.

Facebook continued to
grow rapidly and by mid-2006, it hosted about 7 million user accounts (Vogesltein,
2007). The site raised another $27.5 million in April 2006 from a joint
financing by Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners, and its existing
investors Accel Partners and Clarium Capital. In the same month, Facebook expanded
its reach beyond the nation to students of selected companies, and in September
2006, it opened registration to everyone worldwide.

Facebook capitalizes
on its ability to connect each user to a network of friends called a social
graph. “People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload and share an
unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the
people they meet” (see facebook.com/facebook#!/facebook?sk=info).

Facebook’s revenues
primarily come from sponsorships and banner advertising. It also allows
outsiders to build applications inside Facebook and keep all the advertising revenues
they earn. According to Zuckerberg, “[Facebook’s] platform strategy isn’t about
winning all the content or owning all the applications” (Needle 2007). This has
led to all kinds of widgets or applications. The Internet industry believes
this is a clever move—one that others, including Google, are trying to copy.

Facebook’s second master
stroke involves its various on-site features. The “news feed” feature, for
example, an event stream on user pages, keeps users updated about what their
friends are doing (e.g., uploading photos and adding widgets). For many users,
this feature is addictive.

The Results

Facebook’s total
revenue in 2007 was estimated at $100 million, mostly from selling ad space
with little profit. The ads are priced not just by cost per mile (CPM) (cost
per 1,000 impressions), but also based on the success of “engagement.” However,
by 2009,

owing to its
explosive growth, revenues reached as much as $800 million (Oreskovic 2010).

Facebook offers more
integrated advertising opportunities to marketers with high campaign budgets.
Marketers can also target users with Virtual Gifts purchased from Facebook.
Moreover, marketers can make use of the many ad networks dedicated to serving
the inventory created by Facebook platform applications. Inventory is sold on
CPM, CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per action), and CPI (cost per impression)
bases.

Currently, the
Internet giants—Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google—are offering to buy Facebook or a
stake in it, for a price that would value the firm at billions. By 2010, more
than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college, and the fastest
growing demographic is those 35 years old and older. It has more than 200
million active users, of which more than 100 million log in at least once each
day. More than 850 million photos and more than 10 million videos are uploaded
to the site each month.

Facebook is at the
crossroads of its future. It can either sell itself off, like MySpace and
YouTube did, build something to stay independent, or give away a stake to a big
company. Facebook has turned down acquisition offers ranging from $750 million
to $1 billion for building “something special.” Some sources believe that an
initial public offering (IPO) is imminent.

Facebook’s top
priority now is developing its own ad platform, and industry experts believe
Facebook wants to become a Web operating system (OS) in a few years. It appears
that the company wants more than what Microsoft is willing to pay, as much as $15
billion. For now, Facebook’s investors seem to be content to let Zuckerberg
chart his own course. Some industry observers question Facebook’s decision to
stay independent. Others even fear it will bite the dust much like Friendster.

However, it is believed
that Facebook could still wind up not taking in investment from either
Microsoft or Google and take an IPO route because its business is well
established. If Zuckerberg’s primary goal is freedom to build something big,
then he should take an investment now from venture capitalists or go for an
IPO.

A venture capitalist
investment would free Facebook to experiment outside the glare of the stock
market and maintain independence, build up infrastructure, and make some
quality hires and acquisitions as necessary.

There are proponents
who think Facebook needs to sell, arguing that social networking sites have the
potential to become multibillion-dollar machines on their own. For now, as to
what course Zuckerberg intends to take, observers can only speculate.

The case of Facebook
illustrates how a U.S. college student’s portal evolved into a full-fledged
social commerce site in less than 3 years (Sethuraman and Rathore 2008). In the
digital economy, ideas are more highly valued than innovative technology.
Facebook is popular not because it introduced a breakthrough technology, but
because it was able to give people what they wanted—a way to collaborate and
share information (Forbes 2007).

Facebook is an
example of a successful online business with a clear value proposition and
focused differentiation. The case also outlines the dilemmas startups face as
they experience growth potential (Sethuraman and Rathore 2008).

How to Establish a Successful Online Business or Blog in5 Stepsaddresses the
fundamental requirements for initiating an online business. It provides a guide
on how to turn a good idea into a successful electronic business and to execute
a business plan with IT skills, management know-how, a good entrepreneurial
attitude, and an understanding of the Internet culture.

You need to stick to
the best practices and use the right tools to get the desired results. The
choice of a web hosting service provider directly determines the degree of
success in your eBusiness venture. My most secure, affordable and reliable web
hosting service providers for online businesses remain OrangeWebsite.comand Namecheap.com.

This step by step tutorial will help you create your website with
WordPress in 10 minutes.Requirements:
Technical skills: none Money: $10 or less if you sign up by clicking
the links in this post.
Time: 10 minutes of actual work, maybe some waiting time here and there. It’s pretty so easy! Just like
many people out there, I used to think starting your own website has to be
really difficult and require special skills or lots of money, but guess what!

I found out that
creating your own website is as cool as playing around some buttons on Facebook. It’s actually fun. I now create websites as if I'm playing a video game.

Unlike in the
yesteryears, you don’t have to learn any coding and all what
not in order to create really sweet and wholesome websites. There are lots of web
hosting service providers that help you get the job done pretty quickly. I personally use Namecheap. I have hosted over 20 sites with them so far for individuals, church organizations and businesses as a freelancer …

Content is the text, images,
sound, and video that comprises Web pages. Creating and managing content is
critical to website success because content is what a visitor is looking for at
a website, and content is what the website owners use to sell the site, the product
or service, and the company that stands behind the site. A successful Internet
presence has always been about effective delivery of the information the
visitor wants—“Content is king!” The following example
illustrates the role content plays in successful online business operations and
the key aspects of creating, delivering, and managing website content. For
details, see How to Establish a Successful Online Business or Blog in
5 Steps. What is content
management?Content Management is the
process of adding, revising, and removing content from a website to keep
content fresh, accurate, compelling, and credible. Let’s see the success
story of Akamai Technologies in creating, delivering and managing content.

There are several webhosting Companies out there, but only two can be shortlisted on my list for their efficiency and credibility with my company sites in the past years. That is, Namecheap.com for being the best domain name registrar and OrangeWebsite.comfor being the best hosting platform.

#1:Namecheap.comNamecheap is the
Domain Name Registrar with the BEST Customer Service. No doubt over 2 million
customers trust them with nearly 5 million domains! Apart from being the
undisputed number 1 domain registrar, Namecheap also offer reliable web hosting services.

Click here to view hosting plan. #2: OrangeWebsite.com Since the establishment of the company in 2009, OrangeWebsite has been offering high-quality and secure web
hosting solutions to its customers worldwide. Although the company data center
is located in Iceland, they have clients from over 100 different countries. The
award-winning customer support team and its skilled specialists are online 24
hours every day, 365 days a year to…

INTRODUCTION My name is Kum Eric Tso. I’m
the CEO of BORN TO REIGN GROUP and the founding president of Voice of Dominion
Ministries Int’l. I run quite a number of successful blogs online including moneymastertutorials.com. I
wrote this eBook to denounce certain unethical activities in the web hosting
industry and to help those who are just stepping out into …

WordPress has become the most widely used blogging platform in the world, estimated to be used on a quarter of a billion websites online today.

WordPress works as a blog, but also as a straightforward content management system, ready to use with search-engine-friendly URLs and fully valid HTML and CSS.With so many sites using WordPress and only about 1,200 themes listed on WordPress.org, there are inevitably lots of sites looking exactly the same. You and your clients need to stand out, or end up being branded as “just another WordPress blog.”In this article, I’ll show you how to take an existing HTML and CSS site template and convert it into a theme for WordPress. Of course, WordPress theming is much too vast a topic to cover entirely in a single article, so I’ll provide you with some resources at the end to further your learning. It’s hoped, though, that this article will serve as a good introduction and give you a solid foundation to start learning aboutcreating your own WordPress …

Once you've been asked to create a website and you sit down
with the person or committee for whom you'll be working, be prepared to answer
the following common questions.
Q: "Why should our church or organization bother with
the building and upkeep of a website? We've gotten along fine without one so
far!"

A: No ministry
that relies on communication should be left in the dust as the world starts
relying on the Internet more and more. It's the ultimate communications tool.
It's a handy resource that can make available just about everything that the
church or organization wants to offer the public, and over-all this can be
accomplished much more cheaply than postal mailings and other methods of
communication.

The website should become a
serious tool that people rely on over and over again in large numbers.
Otherwise, putting the church or organization on the Web will be just a
temporary fad. This year: "Gee, isn't this nice; we're in
Cyberspac…

This step by step tutorial will help you create your website with
WordPress in 10 minutes.Requirements:
Technical skills: none Money: $10 or less if you sign up by clicking
the links in this post.
Time: 10 minutes of actual work, maybe some waiting time here and there. It’s pretty so easy! Just like
many people out there, I used to think starting your own website has to be
really difficult and require special skills or lots of money, but guess what!

I found out that
creating your own website is as cool as playing around some buttons on Facebook. It’s actually fun. I now create websites as if I'm playing a video game.

Unlike in the
yesteryears, you don’t have to learn any coding and all what
not in order to create really sweet and wholesome websites. There are lots of web
hosting service providers that help you get the job done pretty quickly. I personally use Namecheap. I have hosted over 20 sites with them so far for individuals, church organizations and businesses as a freelancer …

Content is the text, images,
sound, and video that comprises Web pages. Creating and managing content is
critical to website success because content is what a visitor is looking for at
a website, and content is what the website owners use to sell the site, the product
or service, and the company that stands behind the site. A successful Internet
presence has always been about effective delivery of the information the
visitor wants—“Content is king!” The following example
illustrates the role content plays in successful online business operations and
the key aspects of creating, delivering, and managing website content. For
details, see How to Establish a Successful Online Business or Blog in
5 Steps. What is content
management?Content Management is the
process of adding, revising, and removing content from a website to keep
content fresh, accurate, compelling, and credible. Let’s see the success
story of Akamai Technologies in creating, delivering and managing content.

There are several webhosting Companies out there, but only two can be shortlisted on my list for their efficiency and credibility with my company sites in the past years. That is, Namecheap.com for being the best domain name registrar and OrangeWebsite.comfor being the best hosting platform.

#1:Namecheap.comNamecheap is the
Domain Name Registrar with the BEST Customer Service. No doubt over 2 million
customers trust them with nearly 5 million domains! Apart from being the
undisputed number 1 domain registrar, Namecheap also offer reliable web hosting services.

Click here to view hosting plan. #2: OrangeWebsite.com Since the establishment of the company in 2009, OrangeWebsite has been offering high-quality and secure web
hosting solutions to its customers worldwide. Although the company data center
is located in Iceland, they have clients from over 100 different countries. The
award-winning customer support team and its skilled specialists are online 24
hours every day, 365 days a year to…

INTRODUCTION My name is Kum Eric Tso. I’m
the CEO of BORN TO REIGN GROUP and the founding president of Voice of Dominion
Ministries Int’l. I run quite a number of successful blogs online including moneymastertutorials.com. I
wrote this eBook to denounce certain unethical activities in the web hosting
industry and to help those who are just stepping out into …

WordPress has become the most widely used blogging platform in the world, estimated to be used on a quarter of a billion websites online today.

WordPress works as a blog, but also as a straightforward content management system, ready to use with search-engine-friendly URLs and fully valid HTML and CSS.With so many sites using WordPress and only about 1,200 themes listed on WordPress.org, there are inevitably lots of sites looking exactly the same. You and your clients need to stand out, or end up being branded as “just another WordPress blog.”In this article, I’ll show you how to take an existing HTML and CSS site template and convert it into a theme for WordPress. Of course, WordPress theming is much too vast a topic to cover entirely in a single article, so I’ll provide you with some resources at the end to further your learning. It’s hoped, though, that this article will serve as a good introduction and give you a solid foundation to start learning aboutcreating your own WordPress …

Once you've been asked to create a website and you sit down
with the person or committee for whom you'll be working, be prepared to answer
the following common questions.
Q: "Why should our church or organization bother with
the building and upkeep of a website? We've gotten along fine without one so
far!"

A: No ministry
that relies on communication should be left in the dust as the world starts
relying on the Internet more and more. It's the ultimate communications tool.
It's a handy resource that can make available just about everything that the
church or organization wants to offer the public, and over-all this can be
accomplished much more cheaply than postal mailings and other methods of
communication.

The website should become a
serious tool that people rely on over and over again in large numbers.
Otherwise, putting the church or organization on the Web will be just a
temporary fad. This year: "Gee, isn't this nice; we're in
Cyberspac…